iNSIGHT

Small Firms Push Design Innovation Faster Than Any Other

The understood rubric is that younger more established firms are consistently able to innovate where large firms are not due to the specialized nature of large firms focusing on clients and a clients specific needs as an outsourced services model which is replicated and sold to other like minded firms rather than as an experimental lab model specifically designed to increase the likelihood of creating breakthroughs.

In How Technology-Based New Firms Leverage Newness and Smallness to Commercialize Disruptive Technologies (Design) we see the clear indication of how this is achieved via “an early mover pursuing the mainstream market with a radical technology is more likely to succeed because resource-rich incumbents will face difficulties in trying to follow. However, an early mover into a broad segment with an incremental product is more likely to be overtaken by late-entering incumbents as the incumbent has an existing brand and reputation, as well as vital complementary assets”